Sure, it might be if GnomeDo was installed by default and tweaked to do the same thing. But since it isn't, I would hardly call it "pointless", but rather, awesome.
It seems like that's a big theme with the latest Unity changes. Huge improvements over the default desktop, but nobody I know was using the default desktop; they all heavily modified it with devilspie, xmonad, and friends, which are far beyond what Unity offers.
So while it seems like a good development in the abstract, it's hard for me to get excited about it personally.
One reason I used wmii instead of the default is because the default stunk. Unity is raising the bar on the default desktop now; I'll definitely give it another look.
I second this. I read some information on Unity and it all sounded so common to me that I thought WMII and the likes actually had an impact on how people making window manager think about window managers.
I'll stick with WMII though as it never gets in my way.
So while it seems like a good development in the abstract, it's hard for me to get excited about it personally.